Thursday, 15 July 2010

Le Tour.

For the first time in many years I have been able to watch every stage of the Le Tour de France.
I love it!
This year's shaping up to be a classic.

The end of today's stage saw a bit of 'argy-bargy' between Mark Cavendish's lead out man, Mark Renshaw, and Julian Dean for which, at the time of typing, Mark Renshaw has been thrown off the tour.
I can't comment because I'm not an expert.
Cycle sprinting always looks like a bear pit to me and I'm always surprised there aren't more serious accidents.
I was reminded of this horror from the final stage of the 1991 tour:



Ouch!
Posted by OutaSpaceMan at 8:30 pm
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5 comments:

Brit said...

I remember that crash and can scarcely believe it was almost 20 years ago.

9:29 am
OutaSpaceMan said...

As my mate Alan P. said at the time:
'He who dares gets spread thinly'.

20 years ago eh..?

Every time I attempt something risky (cycling or otherwise) I see that over-head camera shot in my minds eye.

I was trying to remember,without having to look it up in Interwebshire, what year it was that Greg (Micky Mouse) LeMond won by 8 seconds .
It was 1989 (yes I had to use Google).
Now that really makes me feel so old.

12:14 pm
P. Tash said...

Ouch indeed!

I remember another nasty incident on the tour from a good few years ago that made me cringe. It had been raining and the ground was still wet as the riders came hurtling down a steep cobbled hill with a sharp bend halfway down. I remember wincing in horror as one by one they slipped on the wet cobbles and went skidding along on their arses; bump, bump...bump!

Still makes me shudder to think of it today.

2:07 pm
Parkingspaceman said...

Not a bit of a ghoul, are you, OSM? The crashes are better in Formula 1. Want a link to the Aryton Senna one?

12:08 am
OutaSpaceMan said...

Hmmm...

This year's tour has been very 'crashy' most riders having been down at least once (Get well soon Frank Schleck).
My fear is that, given the antics of Thursday's sprint lead out, there may be an even worse pile up on the way and I'd rather there wasn't.
The Abu crash, combined with a spectacular accident of my own at the Kielder MTB race around the same time, had a profound effect on my ability to sprint.
I find watching the attached video very difficult indeed.

9:19 am

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